Sleepers - The Good, the bad and the damn right ugly!

Sometimes it can be very satisfying driving a 'regular' car that can leave the more exotic machines eating your dust. The generic term for this 'regular cars' is Sleeper. From cars that look pretty rubbish, but are very fast, to cars that look like performance cars but have more power than even a Veyron driver might expect, they all share one thing in common - Lots of Power! So what exactly can a sleeper look like?

We've put together a list of our favourite cars that we feel have potential to become the perfect stealth sleepers. As with all Sleepers, these cars are designed to have a lot of fun with and not really take life too seriously.

The Range Rover P38

First up we Have the Range Rover P38. This is available in both a 4.0L and a 4.6L V8 Engine. These cars make for perfect Sleepers as people often equate big cars with being slow. However, the Rover V8 block marries up nicely with an Eaton Supercharger. To give an idea as to the potential of this block, RPIEngineering managed to achieve 300+bhp on a Dyno

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RPIEngineering showing a 300+bhp Dyno Run on a Rover V8 Block

Next up is the Lexus IS200

Next we have the Lexus IS200. This car featured a 2.0L Inline-6 Block producing 153bhp as standard. This car is seen as more of a luxury car than a racer, meaning that it is often overlooked. However, the engine bay on this vehicle can be found homely to a lovely 1UZ-FE 4.0L V8 Taken from it's older brother, the Lexus GS400. Below is a video showing just what this car with it's engine swap is really capable of!

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Lexus IS200 with a 1UZ-FE engine taken from a Lexus GS400

Last but not least we have the Subaru Forester

The Forester is often seen as a Land Rover Wannabe. It used the Impreza platform but with the larger 2.5-liter DOHC EJ25D four-cylinder boxer engine from the Outback, making 165 hp (123 kW) at 5600 rpm and 162 lb·ft (220 N·m) of torque at 4000 rpm. This may not sound fantastic, but Rene Rosario would have to disagree with you there. His Forester pushes 479BHP and achieves 0-60 in just 3.5 seconds!